Dying to Live

Summary

A lone survivor in a zombie-infested world, Jonah Caine wandered for months, struggling to understand the apocalypse in which he lives.

Unable to find a moral or sane reason for the horror that surrounds him, he is overwhelmed by violence and insignificance. Then Jonah comes across a group of survivors living in a museum-turned-compound. They are led by Jack, an ever-practical and efficient military man; and Milton, a mysterious prophet who holds a strange power over the dead. Both share Jonah’s anguish over the brutality of their world as well as his hope for its beauty. Together with others, they build a community that reestablishes an island of order and humanity surrounded by relentless ghouls. But this newfound peace is short-lived, as Jonah and his band of refugees clash with another group of survivors who remind them that the undead are not the only—nor the most grotesque—horrors they must face.

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Dying to Live - Kim Paffenroth

3.1.42–43

I AWOKE TO find a lone zombie underneath my little hideaway. The tree house I had spent the night in was poorly constructed—the bottom was just a square of plywood, reinforced with a couple boards, with plywood walls on three sides and the fourth one open. It had no roof, but the sky was clear, so no bother. All the pieces were irregular and unpainted, with big gaps between them in many spots, and the walls were only between two and three feet high. But it was higher up than most, a good twelve feet off the ground (the kid’s mom must’ve been one of the ones we always called a cool mom, to allow such a dangerous playhouse), so I was even more surprised to see my unwanted visitor.

I scanned the surrounding field and trees and saw that the zombie and I were alone; my heart slowed down. In a few moments, my situation had gone from peaceful morning reverie, to possible or near-certain death, to minor inconvenience. In that respect, this was a typical morning.

Tree houses, and any other little platform above the ground, were my favorite places to catch a couple hours of sleep at night as I made my way across the country. Going inside a building required a careful search, and later on, as you tried to sleep, you’d start to worry that maybe you had missed some hiding place, from which the real Boogie Man, who doesn’t need sleep, would rise up during the night. And building the necessary barricades on the doors and windows often made so much noise you could end up with a growing crowd of the undead, whose moaning and clawing at the doors would probably keep you up, on top of the danger they would pose when you tried to leave your shelter in the morning. Unless you were in a group, a building was not a good choice for your little motel in hell.

Little platforms above ground, on the other hand, were ideal. Not comfortable, but ideal. You usually had to lash yourself to them so you wouldn’t fall off in the night, and you almost always had to sleep sitting up, but that was nothing for a few blessed hours of relative peace of mind. The undead are by nature incurious and almost never look up, so the chances of being spotted once you were in your little eyrie were low. For exactly the same reason that hunters once used them, back when humans were the hunters rather than the hunted, your scent wouldn’t usually carry down to the creatures below, either. The tree houses always made me a little sad, ’cause they reminded me of my kids, but what could you do? All in all, my little sky boxes were the best places I had found to spend the night, so long as the living dead were afoot. But best, of course, had never been the same as perfect, and that was infinitely more true now.

One reason the zombie and I were alone this morning was that it lacked the ability to make sound. Like so many of its kind, its throat was torn open, leaving its windpipe a ragged hole, and the front of its suit stained brown with blood.

It looked up at me with its listless, cloudy eyes that lacked all expression—not hatred, not evil, not even hunger, just blanks. It was chilling in its own way, like the stare of a snake or an insect. Its look would never change, whether you drove a spike through its head, or it sank its yellow teeth into your soft, warm flesh; it lacked all capacity to be afraid, or to be satisfied. Its mouth, however, had a great deal more bestial expression to it, for it was wide open, almost gnawing at the bark of the tree as it clawed upward.

I stood looking down at it for a few moments. It was times like this—and there had been several in the last few months—that I had always wished that I smoked. In a few seconds, I would fight this thing and one or both of us would cease to exist—die is obviously the wrong word here—and just to stand here and contemplate that inevitability cried out for some distraction, some mindless and sensual habit like smoking, to make it less horrible. I guess I could’ve chewed gum, but that would make the whole scene ridiculous, when it was really as serious, overwhelming, and sad as any that had ever occurred to a man.

With nothing to distract me, I just felt the full weight of a terrible and necessary task, and the tediousness and unfairness of it. I had just awakened from a relatively peaceful sleep, and I already felt a crushing weariness coming over me. Again, it was developing into a pretty typical morning.

People had come up with lots of names for the walking dead in the preceding months. While we weren’t fighting them off or running like hell, we usually came up with humorous labels. Meat puppets was a popular one. Somebody came up with Jacks and Janes, like they were just some annoying neighbors from the next circle of hell, or as a variation on Jack-offs.

Sometimes, when they’d get especially noisy and rambunctious, but didn’t pose any immediate threat, we’d call them the natives, as in the natives are restless. Maybe that was a little racist, I don’t know. Walking stiffs was pretty accurate. But mostly we’d go for the tried and true—zombies. That’s what they were, and we’d always be one breath away from becoming one—a mindless, shambling bag of flesh.

My zombie this morning looked to have been a middle-aged man in its human life, slightly graying, average build. Its suit was intact, and other than its throat wound, there were no signs of further fights with humans or other zombies. Decay had taken its toll, and it looked more desiccated than gooey, a brittle husk rather than the dripping bag of pus that some of them became.

At first, I looked it over to size up its threat and plan my attack, but that quickly turned into contemplating its human existence. Maybe his kids had built the tree house, and that’s why he’d been hanging around here, almost as if he were protecting it, or waiting for them to come back. Or even worse, maybe his kids had been the ones to tear out his throat, when he had rushed home in the midst of the outbreak, hoping against hope they were still okay. Or, just as bad, maybe he’d been bitten at work or on the way home, only to break in to his own house and kill his kids.

My mind reeled, and I clutched the wall of the tree house. I’d heard of soldiers in other wars having a thousand yard stare, a blank look that signaled they were giving in to the hopelessness and horror around them, soon to be dead or insane. As for me, I was suffering the thousand yard stare of the war with the undead: once you contemplated the zombies as human beings, once you thought of them as having kids and lives and loves and worries and hopes and fears, you might as well just put your gun in your mouth and be done with it right then, because you were losing it—fast. But, God knows, if you never looked at them that way, if they were just meat puppets whose heads exploded in your rifle’s sights, then hopefully somebody would put a bullet in your brain, because you had become more monstrous than any zombie ever could be.

I shook myself free of my paralysis. I’m not exactly sure why, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I tossed my backpack beyond where the zombie stood. It turned to see where it landed, then immediately looked back up at me. Its head lolled from side to side, and I was again glad that it couldn’t vocalize, as it was clearly getting worked up and would’ve been making quite a racket if it could.

You never used a gun if you didn’t have to, for its noise brought lots of unwanted attention, so I pulled out a knife, the one I carried with a long, thin blade, like a bayonet, as that would work best. I stood at the edge of the plywood platform. I’m sorry, I said, looking right in the zombie’s eyes. Maybe somewhere, deep down, you still understand: I’m sorry.

I took a step forward and started to fall. I tried to hit it on the shoulder with my right foot, but its arms were flailing about, and my boot hit its left wrist, sliding along its arm. I sprawled to the right and then rolled away as the zombie was shoved into the tree.

As it turned to face me, I scrambled up, took a step forward, and drove the knife into its left eye. Its hands flailed about, either to attack me or to ward off the blow. The blade was long and thin enough that it went almost to the back of its skull. The whole attack was noiseless, without so much as the sound of a squish or a glitch as the blade slid through its eyeball and brain.

As I drew the blade out, I grabbed the zombie by the hair and shoved it downward to the side, where it fell to the ground and lay motionless.

And that was that. Like everyone, I always used to imagine deadly fights would be much more dramatic. But in my experience, there were seldom any Chuck Norris flying, spinning kicks, or any Matrix-style running up the wall while firing two guns on full auto. If anyone’s ever around to make movies about the wars against the undead, maybe there will be such moves in them, I don’t know. But usually, like this morning, there were just a couple of savage, clumsy blows, and it was over.

I was barely breathing at all, let alone breathing hard, the way I felt someone should when they kill something that was somehow, in some small way, still human. A few months ago, I would’ve at least felt nauseous, but not anymore. Looking down at the creature from the tree house had been much more traumatic than delivering the killing blow.

I bent down over my would-be killer and cleaned the blade on his suit jacket. I then reached into his pocket. It was a little ritual I still followed when I could, though the horrible exigencies of a zombie-infested world usually made it impossible. I pulled out his wallet and got out his driver’s license. Rather than look at the bloody horror at my feet, with its one undead eye and one bloody, vacant socket, I stared at his driver’s license picture—smiling, happy, alive, years and decades of life ahead of him. I cleared my throat to speak clearly. I have killed Daniel Gerard. I hope he’s somewhere better now.

I cast the wallet and license on top of his motionless body, scooped up my backpack, and hurried away.

It had been close to a year since all the worst parts of the Bible started coming true. Armageddon. Apocalypse. The End of Days. God’s righteous judgment on a sinful humanity. Whatever the self-righteous jerk who railed at you once a week from a pulpit used to call it. Well, he might have been self-righteous and a jerk, and now he was probably lurching around like most everyone else, drooling on himself with half his face torn off, but it sure seemed as though he had had some inside information that we all wish we’d gotten a little sooner.

For most people, I assume it started like every other day. Brush your teeth. Kiss your spouse without any feeling. Go to work. Grab whatever it is you grab to eat on your way to work. Eat it, not really noticing or enjoying it. But then at some point that blessed, kind, comforting routine goes horribly awry and someone—maybe your neighbor, or coworker, or worse, your kids or your spouse—staggers up to you with a blank look and tries to tear your throat out with his teeth. If he gets you, then you don’t have to worry anymore, because you’ll be dead, and then you’ll get up and wander around like him, with no more thoughts or feelings, just shuffling around trying to bite people. If you get away from him, then you’d be one of the survivors, at least for a little while, and then you’d have lots of worries, and your only feeling would be fear. Either way—welcome to hell.

Theological assessments aside, the automatic assumption was that the dead were rising and killing because of some infection, and the infection was spread by their bites. The next logical assumption—since there was not much reliable evidence of zombie infestations before the 21st century (horror movies notwithstanding)—was that we had tinkered with viruses and DNA and had brought all this shit on ourselves.

Here again, a theological assessment was hard to avoid. We had created a hell on earth through our own arrogance and ignorance, and now we were reaping what we had sown—with a vengeance. Worse than any couple who ate an apple or any bozo who slapped some brick and mortar on the Tower of Babel, we’d messed with The Man’s prerogatives, and either He’d given us the biggest damn smack down of all time, or we’d just set off something that only He could control. Shit, you didn’t need to believe in the Bible to see how much sense it made. You remember that crazy Greek myth you read about in fifth grade—Pandora’s box. Same damn thing. A box full of walking cannibal corpses who wouldn’t let you close it once it got open.

Now, how that box got opened, that was a hot topic of debate among survivors, when we weren’t fighting to prolong our miserable existence and could afford the luxury of conversation or discussion. Outright warfare or a terrorist attack was probably the least popular theory, though it had vigorous proponents. I don’t know why more of us didn’t subscribe to that hypothesis. I suppose it’s funny to say, but I think we didn’t because it was the least comforting of all our speculations. It was too horrible to imagine that even terrorists could unleash the hellish plague of undeath on the whole world, even their own people, including women, children, and the elderly. And at the same time, the theory made it too pat and simple, like it was just some crazies who did this, some tiny band of malcontents—horror of this magnitude seemed to require a more powerful, far-reaching source.

That’s probably why more people bought into the paranoid, conspiratorial theory that the disease had been released by our government or someone else’s as a horribly botched attempt to test it on a real population. Proponents of this theory almost delighted in its vindication of every real and imagined form of government-sponsored terror, from Andersonville to Tuskegee to Gitmo to putting fluoride in the tap water. Their tales could almost be the bedtime stories of the apocalypse, lulling us to sleep with some tiny and bizarre shred of hope that even now, the world made some weird kind of sense, that undeath was not a new and incomprehensible kind of evil, but just a continuation of this world’s madness and brutality, like Jackie scrambling on the trunk of the Lincoln to grab the big chunk of her husband’s head that was sliding around back there, or like bulldozers pushing mountains of emaciated bodies into pits in Dachau. Strange comfort, that, but it was often all we had.

But the most popular theory—the one I personally advocated, though without much conviction—was simply that there had been a horrible accident. Nothing malevolent or calculated, just plain old human error. Somebody dropped a test tube somewhere. A lab monkey bit through somebody’s glove. The kind of thing that happens a thousand times a day for thousands of days with no fatal outcome. It was the most blackly humorous theory, I suppose, for it made the misery and violent deaths of billions of people just the result of a stupid mistake, but it had its own cold comfort. If all this was just some blunder, then maybe, if we could ever shoot every zombie in the head—the only way we had found to kill them permanently—or if they would just eventually rot and fall apart—what everyone had hoped for initially—then we could go back to life like it used to be. We weren’t evil, just stupid and clumsy. Like poor Pandora.

That’s how some of us theorized that it had begun. But whatever had happened—and I’ve left out the more exotic theories, like an extra-terrestrial source of infection—we ended up in the same place. Almost one year after the first corpse rose, the world was ruled by the undead, who wandered about with no discernible goal other than to kill and eat living people. The undead were everywhere, the new dominant species that took the place of the old, extinct one. Places where there had been large human populations were especially thick with the walking dead, though they never took any notice of one another.

The living, meanwhile, as was their wont, almost always congregated in little groups. The government or society or culture had imploded or disintegrated with terrifying speed as the infection spread. Within hours, there had been no telephone service, no police or rescue response to the terrified calls for help. Within days, there was no power or television. And within weeks, the last organized military and government resistance collapsed, at least in the U.S.

But groups of survivors quickly came together into little groups, little communities with a pecking order and rules and authority, but also some of the little perks of being around other people—companionship, conversation, sex, someone to hold your hand when you die, someone to put a bullet in your brain when you went to get back up as a zombie. (And if you’ve ever seen a zombie—and God love you, I hope you haven’t, but if you’re reading this, I suspect you have—then you know that last perk is by no means the least important one.) You didn’t have to be a damned philosopher to know that we’re social animals, and would be till the last zombie bit the last human and dragged us all down to hell, which, judging by the zombies, looked like it was going to be the most unsociable place imaginable.

Yes, humans always build their little communities in order to survive, and in order to make surviving a little more bearable. Except me. I was alone. And it sucked. It was dangerous and it sucked.

By midday, I was moving closer to what looked like a small-sized city. I had thrown my maps away a few days ago when I had failed to find my family. After that, I figured, I didn’t have much need for maps: if I didn’t have any place to go anymore—and I had decided that I didn’t—what difference did it make where I was at the moment? Besides, the end of civilization had wreaked a lot of havoc with the things depicted on maps: I guess the rivers and mountains were still there, but cities were gone, roads were clogged with wrecked cars, bridges and tunnels and dams had been blown up to try to stop the rampaging hordes of the undead. So long as I was out of reach of those things, and had one bullet for myself if it came to that, I was in about the best location I could hope for.

It was a late spring day, bursting with a sunshine that didn’t make it hot, but just made things seem better, brighter, more alive than they were on other days. I still had the instinct to call it beautiful as I looked around and forgot the obvious shortcomings of the day for a moment. One shortcoming I couldn’t forget, however, was the gnawing hunger I felt.

Never one for breakfast, I had definitely been put off from eating anything this morning after killing Daniel Gerard, a man who, after all, had only been looking for something to eat, just as I was. I had some supplies in my backpack, but if I was near an area where I could forage for more and conserve what I had, that would be the much wiser

Reviews

I had not intended to rate this book so highly, since I'm mystified by why people find zombies so interesting. It also struck me that if you had weapons and a finite number of zombies (no one left for them to bite), why wouldn't you form hunter-killer groups to go out and continually whittle down the population until they were all gone? But Dr. Paffenroth found a meaningful way around that, and while his describing human behavior in moral terms was at times difficult to take, I thought the book overall was an excellent metaphor of how nightmarish the human condition can sometimes be.

I really enjoyed this book. Its not just a 'run around scared and shoot zombies" book. It was a real social commentary about how our lives intermingle, the good and the bad in everyone, and the way people react when grouped together. This is a book that really breaks the mold of typical horror fiction and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a bit more that nightmare and adrenaline.

Meh. Rather mediocre tale of a world ravaged by zombies. Solo survivor finds others, joins community, thinks all is well till the meet another group of survivors that remind them all that people can be the worst monster. Not alot of depth in story or complexity to the characters. At least it was a fast and easy read.

This story grabbed me from the first page, and then wouldn't let go! The action starts right away, without any explanation or prologue. Just as well, because most prologues are usually pretty useless. It was like joining a program already in progress, but the author does it in such a way that I never felt confused or lost but instead was hooked and couldn't wait to find out what happened next!The main character is Jonah Caine, a survivor wandering the country after failing to find any sign of his family. We eventually discover that Jonah was away from home when the zombie outbreak first happened, and he left his safe haven to try to find his family. I really liked how the author didn't feel the need to over-explain or simplify anything, and seemed to assume that we were smart enough to figure certain things out on our own. Thank you! I get so tired of some authors interrupting the story to explain things as though everyone is an idiot.Gave this one a 5/5 rating because I kept reading just-one-more-chapter until suddenly it was past midnight and I had to go to work the next day. But I finished the book, so it was worth it! Love it when a story pulls you in and you lose track of time! Is this the best written book this year? No, but it's definitely worth reading! I'm not a huge zombie fan, but am starting to warm up to them. And this book was more about the human survivors than the zombies themselves. And the real monsters in the book weren't even zombies, but fellow humans. That scared me more than the thought of being eaten alive!

Engrossing read with empathetic characters and a style that is surprisingly literate (Surprisingly? Let's face it, zombie books aren't meant to be the pinnacle of literature). Certain scenes are very memorable and, not to raise spoilers but referred to obliquely, they are: the initiation; the rooftop; the smoke trail. You’ll know to what I am referring once you’ve read it. If I have any criticism, and, oh, it is so very minor, is that the religious symbolism in the midst of the smoke trail scene is a little too…um, apparent; I think if it had been shrouded just a little more it would have been better.

This book started out a little shaky, it used a old formula; person is far away from home when attack starts, and makes his way back slowly, only to find his loved ones dead/zombified. After that it goes straight into a survival story, and at one point I somehow managed to skip 3 chapters, and I didn't even realize it until I was near the end of the novel and I was wondering how a certain character was doing something, and I had no idea who he was. Going back to the chapters I missed didn't make the story any more entertaining unfortunately, though it did clear up my confusion. Perhaps the fact that I missed those chapters is coloring my review, but the whole fact that I did and did not realize it until the end of the novel... This book follows a very linear sort of storyline, and it's pathetically easy to see what comes next. Check it out from the library if you're a zombie fan {as I am) but leave off actually buying it.

One man believes his is the lone survivor of a zombie outbreak and struggles to come to terms with what and why it all happens. Except he is not alone - and one day he happens upon another group of survivors and learns that maybe the zombies weren't so bad after all.

Dying to Live is Kim Paffenroth's first novel and quite an outstanding first attempt. The story follows Jonah Caine who is the all-in-one underdog, hero, and saint. Wandering, alone, across the apocalyptic terrain Jonah eventually joins up with a group that has holed up in a museum. The group is lead by Milton, who the rest of the group looks up to as some sort of messiah. Jack, on the other hand is tactical and logistical leader of the group. From their first meeting, Jonah and the museum folks fight the undead and other evil in the world just to have a merger existence. Dying to Live is by no means a simple zombie bash. No, it also takes a page from Paffenroth's Gospel of The Dead and is very much an examination of humanity. Many comparisons are made between the living and undead. This quote (taken from memory, so I hope it is correct) "We are not evil, just dumb and clumsy" highlights this aspect of the book. The living, just like the unliving, are prone to be dumb and clumsy. Often Jonah struggles with killing the zombies, as he still identifies with them. He also observes that in many ways that the living are much more cruel than the dead. Also, those who read the biblical story of Jonah & the novel Moby-Dick will see some familiar ideas. For instance the beginning of the book will surely remind you of Moby-Dick, while later; the story of Jonah is invoked. While Dying to Live is the most intellectually stimulating zombie novel I have ever read, fear not, there is plenty of action, gore, and fright to go around. There are some very well described combat sequences, some downright frightening parts, and one particular scene during Frank's story that will both make you sick to your stomach and scare the crap out of you. Dying to Live is an absolute great piece of writing that will both stimulate your mind and deliver the action and gore that we all love so much. With this book Kim Paffenroth shows that there is more to zombie fiction than eating flesh and killing with head shots. Dying to Live is a welcome break from the typical zombie book and the new favorite on the top of my list.

Well, I saw this book on Amazon and was intrigued by the title.....Dying To Live: A Novel of Life Among the Undead. I read the short synopsis and decided that I wanted to read it. Good choice for myself. Seeing that I have enjoyed David Moody's Autumn series, I figured that this was going to be somewhat the same kind of story. I always enjoy a good zombie book (and movie too, as long as there are no cheesy effects!). Well, this book follows the lives (or attempted lives) of a survivers of a plague that killed most of the world's population and made them the living dead. The action has already taken place when the story starts out. So right from the beginning we're following a lone surviver, Jonah, who thinks that he is the last. We go with him on his journey of killing the occasional zombie while making his way through the baren lands and then he finds more survivors hiding in a museum because he sees writing on a wall that say: ARE YOU DYING TO LIVE OR LIVING TO DIE? (Hence the title of this post......). This book contains lots of action and other obstacles that the survivors have to face that are not of the undead! Please if you like zombies, go out and grab this one. This is an attention grabber and keeps you turning the pages again and again!

Great & refreshing work ... They call it the thinking man's zombie novel ... I must say I enjoyed the cerebral aspects of the story - along with the standard fast-paced horror fare ... Definitely would recommend this book.

Rather than flowing as a continuous narrative, the book stalls through episodic encounters and cliched character introductions. This can be forgiven, due to the pulp nature of the zombie genre. What can't be forgiven is the arbitrary final act that has characters so two dimensionally evil, they defy suspension of disbelief, while failing even to give the characters a worthy nemesis.